Badlands
National Park located in southwest South Dakota has almost a quarter million
acres consisting of highly eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires, truly
a bad area to cross. The history of the White River Badlands as a rich
fossil area dates to Native American knowledge of the area. The Lakota
found large fossil bones, seashells and turtles and correctly surmised
that the area had once been under water, and that the fossils belonged
to animals that no longer existed. Formal paleontological study began
in the 1840s. The White River Badlands became popular fossil hunting grounds
with many new fossil species over succeeding decades. During the late
1800s and continuing today, scientists from around the world have studied
the fossils of the White River Badlands. The area contains
the richest assemblage of Oligocene mammal fossils known. Comparisons of the White
River Badlands fossils with those of similar age from around the world
have been paramount in shaping our knowledge of Oligocene life, and particularly,
mammal evolution.